There is little doubt to me that those of us following innovation measurement are patent obsessed, but that's not often because we want to be.  But as much as we talk about moving away from patents, patents are relatively easy to get data on and as such patents remain the dominant source of data used to look at innovation by academics around the world.  The OECD Patent Statistics Manual is a primer for anyone looking to use patents as an indicator.  Check out their newly revised edition on the OECD's patent statistics page.

Chapter 1. Objectives and Scope of the Manual

Chapter 2. Patents as Statistical Indicators of Science and Technology

Introduction | Legal foundations of patents | Administrative routes for protection | Economic foundations of patents | The information content of patent documents | Patents as statistical indicators of inventive activity | Patent databases | Topics of investigation

Chapter 3. Patent Systems and Procedures

Introduction | The core patenting procedure | National and regional procedures | International patent applications

Chapter 4. Basic Criteria for Compiling Patent-Based Indicators

Introduction | Reference date | Reference country | PCT applications | Patent families | Normalised country-level patent indicators

Chapter 5. Classifying Patents by Different Criteria

Introduction | Technology fields | Industry classification | Regional classification | Institutional sectors | Patents by companies | Patents by investors

Chapter 6. The Use and Analysis of Citations in Patents

Introduction | What are citations? | Uses and applications of citations indicators | Citation practices in patent offices | Citation-based indicators | Non-patent literature | Other indicators based citation categories (EPO and PCT search reports)

Chapter 7. Indicators of Internationalisation of Science and Technology

Introduction | Indicators | Ownership and research strategies

Chapter 8. Indicators of Patent Value
Introduction | Forward citations | Indicators